Training Day
by Roland 'Jim' Lowery
Summary: :UNFINISHED:  Before Nack could go on to become a feared and respected bounty hunter, he first had to lose one family and gain another.  And, of course, he had to train train train train TRAIN!
1. Day Zero Prologue

The following short story is based on characters created and/or copyrighted by SEGA! Enterprises, DiC Productions, Archie Comic Publishers, Fleetway Comic Publishers, and the Taki Corporation. All other characters were created and copyrighted by Roland Lowery.

The author gives full permission to distribute this work freely, as long as no alterations are made and the exchange of monetary units is not involved. Any questions, comments, suggestions, or complaints should be sent to **esn1g(at)yahoo(dot)com**. Thank you.

* * *

"Great families of yesterday we show,  
And lords, whose parents were the Lord knows who."  
-Daniel Defoe

* * *

**Training Day**  
by Roland 'Jim' Lowery 

**Prologue - Day Zero**

**Thursday, January 8  
3215 AD**

_With consciousness came the_ sound and smell of rain, and the feeling of complete and utter desolation. He could feel tears running down his face at just the right difference in density to be distinguishable from the rainwater. He had been crying in his sleep again. Undoubtedly, it wouldn't be the last time. That made two nights he'd spent sleeping in an alleyway and crying himself through sleep, two night spent in a torrential downpour that never seemed to stop.

Even though he knew it was a futile gesture, he raised his hand to his face and tried to wipe the tears from his cheeks. The outside pressure merely caused the salt water to mingle in with the fresh that was covering him from head to toe. He was calling a plastiboard box home now, but it certainly wasn't much of a house, unable to keep even the slightest amount of the elements from reaching him.

_Home._

Just thinking about it twisted his insides and caused fire to spread out over his nerves in almost physically painful waves. He'd had a real house once, though it was hard to ever call it a home. The only time it ever seemed to approach such a state was when his mother was there and his father wasn't, which wasn't often.

He snarled at himself angrily and violently shook off the mental image of his father. As far as he was concerned, that man didn't exist anymore. In fact, he decided to go even further with his mental discarding by finally daring to cast away one of his father's most prized possessions . . . his name.

Through all fifteen years of his life, the young man had been forced to listen over and over again about how Grandfather Packleader had done this. How Great-Great-Great Grandmother Packleader had done that. How every Packleader in the entire expanse of Mobian history had been the greatest and most powerful and influential being on the face of the planet and how he was not measuring up to the Packleader standard and how his father, the Great Head of the Packleader Family Itself, could not understand how a runt like him would ever amount to anythi-

"_nnnnnnnnnnnnnnYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!_"

His head felt as if it were going to explode from all the pent up pain and frustration. His muscles burned with the hatred that could move mountains, destroy worlds, evaporate galaxies into nothingness. He stored up every bit of the power flowing through his body until he felt he could no longer stand it and then burst out of his box. He stood in the middle of the alley, roaring his fury at the rain falling around him.

"_I. Am. Nack. The. WEASEL!_" he bellowed into the darkness. "I _hate_ the Packleaders! I wish they'd never existed! And I will outlive and outdo _everything_ that they have made and done! _I will destroy them! AAAAAAAARRRR!!!_"

Rage still ran through his veins, causing him to stomp on the ground and punch the air. He railed against everyone and everything that had ever done him wrong, real or imagined. He cried and screamed and cursed the fate that had put him on Mobius until his throat was hoarse and his body ached from the exertion. He collapsed to the plascrete in a heap, tears and snot leaking out and getting washed away by the rain.

It had been two days since he had left that dreaded place, and each day had been filled with similar displays of pure infuriation. They had also been cold, miserable, wet days, and it seemed that they would continue to be so if things didn't change . . .

Even with the blood pumping through his ears with the sound of a raging waterfall, Nack couldn't miss the sound of several people running through the backalley adjacent to his own. The steady pounding of feet through the inch of water covering the ground was unmistakably that of people running away from someone or something else as quickly as possible.

He picked himself up cautiously and wiped his nose on the forearm of his jacket. As horrible as he felt, his interest was still piqued. He started walking towards the alley intersection but had only taken a few steps when the group came into view.

Not a single one of them could have been over the age of twenty-five. Their clothing - on those that bothered wearing clothes, in any case - ranged from bright, flashy, and gaudy to plain, dirty, and well-worn. They were all as thin as a rail, looking as if they hadn't eaten in weeks. Some of them were toting handguns and other weapons of various makes and models, and all of them were carrying weatherproofed mini-computers.

As they passed, one of them looked to the side and saw Nack standing there. A truly wicked grin spread across the narrow face and then . . . they were gone. Their receding footfalls were all that was left to prove that they had even existed.

Pulled out of his sudden state of shock, Nack propelled himself forward to run after them. He had no real idea of what he was doing or why he was doing it. All he knew was that he _had_ to find out who those people were. He turned the corner just in time to see the last of the strange group turn down another alley about a hundred feet away.

Nack pumped his legs harder, pushing himself into a full sprint. He was now filled with a greater purpose than mere curiosity. Yesterday he had explored all the nearby junctions of the labyrithine alleyway, and he knew that that very alley was a dead end. If they were in fact running away from someone, they would be trapped down there. He didn't know who they were or what they had done that they would have to try and escape, but he couldn't let them be captured or possibly killed just because they'd made a mistake following directions!

He angled around the corner and came to an abrupt stop. The short corridor was completely deserted.

"What the-?!" Nack whirled around, searching every corner of the dead end to see if he'd missed something. He checked the surrounding building's service door, but it was sealed just as shut as it had been the day before. It didn't have an outside handle or access pad anyway, so it most likely opened up from the inside only, giving no chance for escape. The walls had no fire escapes and were otherwise unscalable.

They'd simply vanished.

On his third circuit around the short alley, he felt an arm circle its way around his neck and clamp down before the yelp that had formed in his chest could get out. He barely had time to register the fact that the arm was reaching out from inside one of the walls before it dragged him that wall and into complete and utter darkness. He could feel his back pressed up against a young woman's chest, his head held underneath her chin. Before he could say anything, he also felt her free hand clamp down across his mouth.

After a few intense seconds, a softly keening whine filled the air. Nack recognized it immediately as that of a Peacebot's hovercycle, slowly cruising down the alleyway that he had just recently occupied. After a few moments, the whine hit a higher pitch as the 'bot kicked up the speed and moved on.

"Maze!" he heard one of the other Mobians whisper angrily. "Near bloody skullcapped! Who quaked?"

"None's quake," someone else said. "Zero Kelvin, neh?"

_What the hell are they talking about?_ Nack asked himself as he listened to the unfolding conversation. None of it seemed to make any more sense than the first of it, even though the people talking seemed to be following it all well enough. But even though he couldn't understand any of the specifics, he gradually became aware that the topic of discussion had turned towards him.

A particularly gruff voice spat out, "SFB! Peepin' the domes here! Skullcap 'im, Breva!"

This was accompanied by a sharp jab to Nack's ribs. He squirmed in the girl's grasp, but she simply clamped down tighter. Even though she was so thin that he would've been sure he could easily break her in two with his fingers, her muscled had suddenly turned into steely bands that held him tighter than any weightlifter could have ever done.

"Quiet!" she hissed, tilting her head to the side and forward so that her warm breath poured over his ears. "No one's going to hurt you . . . right-right, Dackers? None's skullcappin'!"

A chorus of agreements, some more enthusiastic than others, filled the dark space. Nack relaxed a little. If they were planning on doing something terrible to him, at least they were postponing it for the moment. Slowly, the hand left his mouth and the girl released him from her death grip.

"Who . . . _are_ you people?" he asked as he turned to face them in the dark. Instead of an answer, he heard the muted rustle of bodies moving around in a tight space. Suddenly, bright light assaulted his eyes as two of the Mobians pulled open a trapdoor set in the ground.

After his sight quickly adjusted, Nack could see that the girl who had been holding him was the same grey-furred ferret that had grinned at him back in the alleyway. She looked to be about three or four years older than Nack and stood almost a full head taller.

"Hallo," she said, holding out a slender palm. "I'm Breva. We're the Hacker-Dackers."

Nack took her hand and shook it carefully. He had expected to get his paw back right after, but Breva seemed to have other ideas. She half-dragged him as she pushed her way through the group and joined the several others who had already jumped through the hatchway. Not expecting this, Nack landed on his feet clumsily. After getting back on balance, he looked around at his new surroundings with wonder.

Everything around him was in complete disarray. Electronics equipment, computer parts, tools . . . every available surface from the desks to the tables to the tops of a entire row of coffee machines was covered with enough gadgetry to keep even the most rabid tech-geek busy for centuries. The room - and from everything Nack could see, it was all just one single gigantic room - was built in the same manner as a plascrete bunker, though it was hard to tell through all the diagrams, musical band posters, and computer printouts that covered the walls and much of the floor. Metal alloy pylons dotted the room in an irregular grid pattern, apparently the only thing holding the ceiling and the rest of the building above from crashing to the floor.

The Hacker-Dackers ignored Breva and her new little friend for the most part, all of them scurrying to their individual workstations to plug their micro-computers into the desktops. All the while, the air was filled with the constant chatter of their strange lingo.

"Cozy, ain't it?" Breva asked. Nack could only nod as he gaped at everything with his wide green eyes.

"This . . . is MobiaNet," she said, answering his unasked question. "The computers in this room are linked to every single computer matrix on the entire planet. We got the secrets that even the secret-keepers don't know about."

Nack stared for a few more seconds before finally regaining his voice. "_Why?_" he asked.

Breva flashed her toothy grin at him. "Freedom of information, kiddo," she said. "We Dackers believe that everyone should get what info they need, when they need it. Often, folks need the info, but don't know where to get it, so we use the 'net to find these folks, and we send the info to 'em. Others, they can't get to the info they need 'cause there's all kinds of agencies and people and such that get in their way, either on accident or on purpose. We break the ice, we cut out the middle man, we get their info, and we send it to 'em."

Feeling like an idiot but not knowing what else to say, Nack repeated, "Why?" He then shook his head to clear it and added, "I mean, what's in it for you?"

Another of those easy grins. "We take our cut," she admitted. "Plenty of crooksters and data-thievies out there that steal from honest decent folks. We steal from them, take our cut, give the rest back to the community at large. And of course, there's the moral satisfaction of helping the world overall, kiddo."

Nack tried to find some trace of sarcasm or cynicism in her last statement, but found none. He tried for a few moments to wrap his head around the idea of anyone doing something just to help others but finally decided it wasn't important at the moment. His immediate future was, however.

"W-why are you telling me all this?" he stammered out.

The ferret leaned down and motioned for him to turn his ear to her. When he did so, she put her lips to his ear and said, "It don't matter if ya know, 'cause we're gonna _eat ya! RAR!_"

Nack squealed when he felt her little needle-sharp teeth lightly nip his lobe. He jumped away and clapped his free hand over the side of his head while trying desperately to pull the other from Breva's grip. He stopped when he noticed that almost everyone nearby was either laughing at him or staring at him oddly.

"That _wasn't funny_," he grumbled as he stepped back towards Breva, who was fighting to keep from laughing out loud herself.

"Ah, it was," she said when things had finally calmed down. "But tell me," she asked, looking down at him with sudden concern, "where are ya livin' right now? Hmm? That old box I saw ya sittin' by in the alley? Who's takin' care of ya? Hell, kiddo, where were ya plannin' on gettin' your next meal from, neh? Have ya got any friends to help ya out?"

The young boy was silent, staring steadfastly at his own boots, giving Breva all the answer she needed.

"Well, then," she said softly. "I'll ask ya this one . . . do ya got any family?"

Nack felt his face convulse in a minor twitch. He had somehow known that question would come up sooner or later, but he had rather hoped it would be later, if ever. He wasn't prepared, wasn't at all sure how he was going to answer. He didn't want to _lie_ to Breva, and felt that she was the type who could tell even if he did.

Images of his family members kept popping into his head. He could see the picture and holo albums of his ancestors and distant relatives flash through his memory as if they were set on fast forward. He could hear the voices of his cousins, his aunts and uncles.

He could see his parents.

His mother. Beautiful. Intelligent. Radiant in all the ways he could never be.

His father. Demanding. Controlling. Everything that Nack hated condensed into a single man.

And slowly, gradually . . . they faded away. Disappeared. Evaporated.

"_Gone._"

Breva leaned down closer to Nack. "What's that, kiddo?"

"I said I don't have any family," he said quietly. He looked up and stared straight into her eyes. "I used to," he said, his tone turning firm and even, "but they're gone now."

A soft, understanding smile spread across Breva's face. Nack thought for a second that she looked just like an angel . . .

"Well then, kiddo," she said as she put a hand on his shoulder, "_we're_ your family now."

* * *

The two of them stood in silence for a few minutes, their hands still clasped together. Nack continued to stare out at these people, these strange and wonderful people who were going to take him in. It seemed strange to him, so awfully strange. In a way, it almost seemed as if in the act of discarding his old name and life, he had actually conjured the Dackers up through his own willpower to fill in the vacuum left behind. 

It was pure coincidence, of course. He'd just happened to be in the right alleyway at the right time . . . but still, it felt like something almost magical to him.

Breva was the one to finally break the silence.

"So, kiddo," she said, "if we're gonna _be_ family, I'd guess it'd only be proper to know each other's names. You've got me at the disadvantage, o'course . . . "

Nack hesitated for a bare second. "I'm . . . Nack The Weasel," he said distractedly.

Breva seemed to mull this over for a few moments. "Really?" she said as she released his hand and turned fully to look at him appraisingly. "If your gonna lie, kiddo, we're definitely gonna have to teach you up a bit on how to do it properly. What's your _real_ name?"

He frowned deeply, turned, and faced her in return. "I _am_ Nack The Weasel," he stated.

This time she nodded approvingly and said, "The truth this time, neh? Good. Telling the truth is a good habit of truly exceptional liars. But we are gonna need your _birth_name at some point, okay? I promise only two people here are ever gonna know it."

"You and me."

"Bright boy," she said. "You're gonna do fine around here. Now c'mon, let's go get you cleaned up and fed. I'm bettin' there wasn't much of a food processor in that box of yours." Nack fell into step beside her as she turned and started walking towards the far end of the room. "After that, I'll give you a little tour," she continued, "but then I'm gonna have to ask you to stay in your room for the rest of the day. We ran more than a couple of missions today and gotta sort through all the crap we got. But be ready to get up bright and early tomorrow mornin', 'cause that's when your trainin' starts. Alright, kiddo?"

"Huh," Nack replied thoughtfully. "I get my own room?"

**END DAY ZERO**


	2. Day One  Homeroom

**Day One - Homeroom**

**Friday, January 9  
3215 AD**

_With consciousness came the_ dull sounds of far away machinery, the earthy metallic smell of plascrete, and the feeling of complete and utter safety and warmth. This triggered a half-second of initial surprise before Nack remembered where he was and how he'd gotten there.

Three days ago - which was, as far as Nack was now concerned, when his life had actually began - he had struck out on his own and quickly found himself in an alleyway of the great city of Mobotropolis. Fortunately for him, he'd been picked up out of the gutter yesterday by a tech-savvy gang of Mobians calling themselves the Hacker-Dackers. They'd taken him in, fed him, and given him a place to sleep.

And speaking of sleep, Nack had gotten plenty enough of that. He pushed his coverlet off, sat up, and swung his feet down to the floor. Only a few short steps later, he was standing before a tiny sink and mirror combo that was built directly into the wall. He turned the faucet on, splashed a bit of the water into his eyes to help him wake up fully, then stared at the reflection in the mirror.

He looked himself over appraisingly, checking thoroughly for any mussed fur and pressing it flat where he found it. Yesterday he had only met a couple of the Dackers in any depth. Today he was going to be introducing himself more properly to the group, and he wanted to make a good impression. He wasn't sure just how much looks really mattered to these people - he certainly knew he himself wasn't too concerned about them - but it never hurt to be prepared.

Past the purple fur that he was trying to slick down into obedience, Nack's most striking feature jutted out nearly an inch from either side of his upper lip. His oversized fangs, the result of a recessive genetic trait making itself known for the first time in a few generations, were generally the first thing that caught people's eye when they looked at him. Nack was never really sure whether this was a good thing or a bad thing . . . the fact that he naturally looked like something out of a horror vid seemed to unsettle folks, a reaction which Nack hadn't yet fully figured out how to turn to his advantage.

For the moment, he'd just have to let the chips fall where they might on that point. The rest he had slightly more control over, so he did what he could with what he had to make himself look presentable. He and his sparse clothing had both gotten a good scrubbing down the previous night, fortunately, so there wasn't too much he had to do. Once he finished, he took a deep breath, released it, and turned around to glance around at his new room.

He'd gotten plenty of time yesterday to look at it, of course. After a short tour of the major facilities in the Dacker base followed by a battery of tests, Nack had been shuffled off to this room and asked not to leave it for any reason until the next day. Not yet sure exactly what would happen to him if he did, he'd opted to stay put for the time being and explore his new environment.

Saying that the room he had been given was sparse would have been an insult to sparseness. The walls were bare paneling under a flat drywall roof and over a grey plascrete floor. A single old-fashioned light bulb - which Nack had neglected to turn off the previous night - lit the room dimly, but adequately enough for getting around. Not that getting around was difficult since there was very little space to get around _to_ and hardly any furniture to get underfoot. Besides the army cot that Nack had slept on, there was a mini-fridge in one corner and a small foot locker in another. Nothing else.

To Nack's eyes, it was the most beautiful place on Mobius. With a short nod of satisfaction at his surroundings, Nack decided it was finally time to set out and meet his new world.

* * *

The hallway outside Nack's room was a continuation on the theme, the only differences being the higher ceiling, greater length, and greater number of doors. Nack slid the magkey he had been given into his own door's slot, securely locking it. He wasn't sure just how safe that could possibly be in a den full of hackers, but it certainly made him _feel_ better. That done, he turned and immediately ran face first into a moving vehicle. 

At least that was his impression until he gathered himself off the floor and found he'd run into some_one_ rather than some_thing_. He put his hand out to help the red fox Mobian up, but had his hand slapped away.

"_Shine_, sirrah!" the fox spat, his face twisted in anger as he picked himself up. He stepped up into Nack's face and snarled. "Whycom en-peep yer skollyin'?! Ye malfun?! Oughta fate ya! Give whycom I oughta en-fate ya, else ye 'n' I . . . w'all split the father _playgrid_, savvy?"

Nack's jaw worked, but nothing came out because he wasn't exactly sure how to respond to what was pure gibberish to him. He was pretty certain that he was being threatened in some way, of course, but not quite sure with what. He could definitely tell that it was a threat that could be acted upon, however. Up that close, he could see that the boy he was facing had to be at least a year or two younger than he, but the thin muscles corded through the boy's body rippled with barely constrained power. He was just about to form some sort of apology when another voice cut through the air and interrupted him.

"Tek-tek!" the voice said melodically yet firmly. "Whatcom spire inplace? Whycom ye en-check wit' Meth?"

The boy's entire expression change into one of mild fear and consternation, as if he'd gotten caught doing something he knew he wasn't supposed to be doing. He turned away from Nack to face the newcomer, jerked a thumb behind him, and started, "SFB inpla-"

"Tek-teeeeeeek . . . " the other said, stretching out the word - name? - warningly.

Grinding his teeth in frustration, Tek-tek nearly growled, "Own . . . _own_ malfun. Backspace." Frowning deeply, he turned back to Nack, performed a short half-bow, and repeated, "Backspace." He then stepped around the weasel and continued down the corridor.

"Uh, thanks?" Nack said cautiously once the other boy had disappeared around a corner. He turned to see that the owner of the melodious voice was a Mobian lion in his early twenties. His mane was long and tied off in the back but cropped close under his chin, and he had a sublimely mild expression that immediately put Nack at ease.

"No worries, brah."

_At least this one speaks Common_, Nack thought, relaxing a little more. _Sort of_. Out loud he asked, "So what was that about exactly?"

The lion gave a little snort-laugh. "You'll have to forgive Tek-tek," he said. "He's one of the lifers we have hanging out around here. Never seen the sun, never spoken anything but the speek. It's makes them a little anti-social, but they're radical at the consoles. The name's Big Ten, by the way. You're Nack The Weasel, right?"

"Right," Nack said as they briefly shook hands.

"It looks like I'm right on time, then. I'm supposed to take you down to the mess hall for breakfast, answer any questions you have, and then take you to your first class."

Nack frowned a little bit. "Class?"

Big ten waved his hand and said, "That's just what we call it, little brah. Try not to think of it like any school you've been to or heard of. You'll see. Now, how about that breakfast?"

* * *

The Dacker mess hall was smaller than the giant workroom Nack had found himself in at the very beginning of the previous day, but not by very much. It was certainly noisier and quite possibly filled with even more people. Tables of all shapes, sizes and descriptions littered the room haphazardly, and Nack couldn't be certain if he could see any two chairs that matched. 

"It's pretty informal here, guy," Ten informed him. "Just grab whatever you want from the processors while I find us somewhere to sit, okay?"

Nack nodded and began to work his way through the confusing mass. It immediately found it difficult, and he was chagrined to notice that everyone else seemed to be slipping and sliding around each other effortlessly. Finally, more through determination and a couple of rough elbow jabs, he made it through to one of the several wall-mounted food processing stations. It was an old-style machine with no voice activation, but that seemed understandable upon retrospect. It would've taken a military-grade VOX to sort anything useful out of the overwhelming chatter filling the room.

Quickly pressing some buttons before he could be shoved out of the way, Nack received something almost resembling what he had ordered and made his way back to where Big Ten was sitting. He was somewhat miffed to see that Ten had already managed to grab his own food, find them both seats, and finish nearly half his meal.

"Eat up," Ten said. "You've got a big day ahead of you."

The food was actually edible despite its appearance. Nack hungrily dug into it at first, but started to slow down about halfway through.

"So, Ten," he fairly shouted as he started cutting a slice of ham. "You said I could ask you questions?"

The lion smiled over his glass of juice. "That's right, brah," he replied, his voice oddly carrying well over all the noise. "Ask away."

"How am I supposed to ask you anything over all this?!"

Ten shrugged slightly and set his glass down. "You get used to it," he said. "And besides, you just _did_ ask me a question. I think we'll do fine. So what do you want to know, brah?"

"Well, I guess the most important thing is . . . who are you guys _exactly?_ What do you do, how do you do it, what's the deal?"

"They didn't tell you anything last night?" Ten asked.

"Just the basics," answered Nack. "That you're a gang of hackers that steal from the info-rich and give to the info-poor, taking your own cut from time to time."

"Yah, that's about as basic as it gets," Ten said with a chuckle. "Okay, before we get into that, I have to ask you . . . do you know what the diginet is?"

"I don't think there's anybody who doesn't."

Ten's eyebrows rose marginally. With his perpetually hooded eyes, it made him look as if he were particularly surprised to be awake. "You'd be amazed," he said. "But okay, do you know how the diginet got _started_, then?"

Nack took a bite of his food, shook his head, and said, "Alrighty, then, I guess that's one I _don't_ know. Never did pay much attention in history class."

"You'll have to start paying attention now, brah," Ten said seriously. "But okay, that's where we'll start. See, way way back when the Acorn Kingdom first united the entire world of Mobius under one banner about three and a quarter thousand years ago, they took a whole lot of steps to make sure it _stayed_ united. One of those steps was the creation of what eventually became known as the diginet.

"There had been small numbers of computers hooked together before that, sure, but this was the ushering in of something different. A worldwide digital network, connecting everybody with everybody else. Information from all around the globe, right at your fingertips, day or night. It was a beautiful thing, man."

"And this is when the Hacker-Dackers were formed?"

Ten held up a hand. "That's jumping a little ahead of things, brah," he said. "No, the Dackers weren't born there, but the group that eventually became the Dackers was. See, even though most were as big on personal freedom and shared information back then as they are now, there were still a lot of people that didn't see that way. They were either still stuck on the old ways of thought from the multi-nation days, or they had things to hide, or whatever else you might think of. These people kept their networks off the main diginet, hid their information behind intrusion countermeasures, and pretty much just tried to keep things to themselves.

"Which, hey," Ten said, straightening up and putting both hands in the air, "that's all cool, man. If people want their privacy, they should have it. The problem was that some of these dudes . . . well, them keeping their secrets was causing other people harm. And they knew it was. Some of them were doing it specifically _because_ it was causing that hurt.

"Enter the hacker, brah. No one remembers anymore what the names of any particular groups were, but we do know that hackers started banding together every once in a while to stop this sort of thing. They'd break into the locked down systems and broadcast whatever they found to anyone who needed it. Not all of them went around it the right way or for the right reasons, but there were enough that did."

Ten spread his arms as wide as he could in the crowded space. "And here we are," he said. "A few thousand years later, and we have the Hacker-Dackers, the spiritual offspring of those long ago console cowboys. We're not the only hacker gang on the planet, or even just this quadrant. But we are one of the largest I've ever heard of, and probably the most well-known."

Nack looked skeptical. "_I've_ never heard of you."

"'Well-known' is relative in this case, brah," he said with a shrug.

"Ah," said Nack. "Alright, so that's where you came from. But what do you _do_?"

"The same thing the original gangs did. The same thing you were already told. We fight the good fight, help the world where we can, and take what we need when we need it as long as it doesn't hurt anybody else in the process."

"You and Breva both keep saying that," Nack said a little impatiently, mentioning the ferret girl that had inducted him into the gang. "The whole thing about taking things on occasion. So you _do_ get recompensated for what you do? Or don't you? What's going on there?"

Big Ten smiled benignly, looking for a moment almost like one of those cheesy What Would the Walkers Do? stickers Nack had seen street vendors selling. The weasel wouldn't have believed anyone could actually achieve the level of lazy cheerfulness drawn on the masked representations of the Ancient Walkers, but Ten obviously had a lot of practice.

"If you're looking for excessive monetary gain here, little brah, I'm afraid you've hitched your board up on the wrong wave," he said. "We get everything we need here. Nobody wants for anything. We make sure of that. Anything else is just wasteful."

"Okay, fine," Nack said, truly impatient now. "Money's not really what I'm after anyway. But . . . what about recognition? You said it was relative, but folks'll still know we're doing good, right?"

"The right people will know at the right times, guy," Ten replied. "Fame is pretty much the same as fortune around here. You'll get what you need, even if it's more or less than you want. And after a while, you'll find you don't want any more than you need anyway."

The smile still lit up Ten's face. _'A lot of practice' is right_, thought Nack with sudden realization. _He's had this conversation before, a hundred times with a hundred other new kids._ He decided to drop it and switch tact.

"Okay, so, saving the world," he said. "How do _I_ fit in with that? What am I going to be doing with my time here?"

"That depends," Ten replied. "There's a lot of overlap, but there's basically two kinds of people around here. The line is roughly drawn between the brains and the brawn."

Nack looked around at the throng of people surrounding them. Just as he'd noticed yesterday, there were marked similarities amongst everyone present. Thin, sleek, knotted muscles rippled under everyone's fur. Everyone had at least a mini-computer strapped to themselves somewhere, and many were festooned with an even greater number and variety of electronic gear.

"I know how it looks to the untrained eye," Ten said to Nack's obvious confusion, "but trust me, brah. The line is there. On the one side, we have the hackers. That's a big 'duh', of course, but it has to be said. On the other side, we've got the bods, short for 'bodyguards'.

"Hackers still work out. They know enough self-defense to handle themselves in a tight situation. But a well-trained bod can take down three or four attackers at once without breaking a sweat. Bods still work with computers. They know enough to crack a door passcode or silence an alarm, but they're nowhere near the technical wizards our hackers are. We like to train everyone up on a little bit of everything because it helps provide balance and efficiency. Everyone helps everyone else do their job."

"I'm gonna go ahead and guess that bods do what their name suggests," said Nack.

"Good guess, brah," Ten said happily. "Good guess indeed. Bods guard hackers during missions. It's a little difficult to crack into a network when you're getting shot at unless you've got somebody between you and them shooting back."

Looking back and forth across the room, Nack thought he could see the subtle differences between the two groups now that he knew what to look for. Here was a woman that moved a little too gracefully to be sitting behind a desk all day. There was a man sorting through a pile of mini-comps, digipads, and sensor paks nearly half a meter deep. One person wearing more weapons than electronics, and another person vice versa.

"Hmm."

"'Hmm' as in 'interesting'?" asked Ten. "Or 'hmm' as in 'I think I already know what I want to be'?"

"'Hmm' as in I think you're right," Nack said, turning his eyes back to Ten. "It depends. Probably on how I do during training today, right?"

Ten grinned and said, "You got it, brah. You're going to get a little bit of actual training today, of course, but most of it is going to be in the form of tests to figure out what you already know."

Nack made a pained face and groaned. "_Tests?!_ Didn't I get enough of those yesterday? I think you guys have poked and prodded me enough for one lifetime . . . "

"Those were just medical, physical, and psychiatric tests, my man. Think of these more like aptitude tests. You're the one that's going to be doing the poking and prodding today, and we're just going to watch and evaluate."

"Yah, alright," Nack acquiesced. "That doesn't sound so bad. Welp," he said, pushing his food tray away from himself, "I'm all finished here. I've got plenty more questions for ya, but I guess we've gotta get this training thing started, huh?"

"Indeed we do, brah," Ten said as they stood up. "And no worries on your questions, there's always time later."

Nack smiled and nodded as he and Ten carried their trays back to the processors. With that bit of business finished, he took a few deep breaths and braced himself for the day ahead.

It was going to be a long one.

**END HOMEROOM**


End file.
